


Echo of Tomorrow

by mystivy



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 21:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystivy/pseuds/mystivy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, they’ll ask him, how do you prepare for a final? And he’ll tell them it’s just like any other match: practice, eat well, sleep well. He’ll be vague, and they won’t push. He won’t tell them this: that he spent the night before the Roland Garros final fucking Rafael Nadal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echo of Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Set just before the final of Roland Garros, 2011.

_Later, they’ll ask him, how do you prepare for a final? And he’ll tell them it’s just like any other match: practice, eat well, sleep well. He’ll be vague, and they won’t push. He won’t tell them this: that he spent the night before the Roland Garros final fucking Rafael Nadal._

 

It is over. It has been over for more than two years, now. That time when he cried at the Australian Open final and Rafa threw his arm around him and made him smile through his tears, and later that night when Rafa would not allow his own tears to fall while Roger told him about the pregnancy and impending marriage. It ended in a hotel room that smelled of new carpet and air conditioning. In the months that followed, Rafa rallied beautifully: no one would ever know that there had ever been anything between them, or that Roger had ended it so abruptly. In quiet moments, Roger can admit to himself that it stings, how easily Rafa seems to have forgotten. But the world continues to turn and they crisscross it together, all the while smiling and speaking of each other with warm respect, and rarely, these days, meeting in matches anymore. Roger can barely remember the last time he hugged Rafa at the net. He misses the smell of sweat and sunshine, the sound of Rafa’s murmured words, meant only for him in the midst of the roar of thousands.

 

They meet on Philippe Chatrier after the Women’s Final crowds have gone. They practice together. Roger makes a joke about it feeling like a dress rehearsal, and Rafa laughs. But it does. It feels ritualistic, as if they are practising not just tennis, but the entire event itself. Roger can hear some echo of tomorrow in the fall of the evening; he can hear the crowds in the stands and taste the dust and sweat in his teeth and on his tongue. He feels as if there is a thin veil between now and then, shadows on the other side, and that if he focuses enough and remains still enough, he will see who it is holding the Coupe des Mousquetaires.

But Rafa is the far side of the net, his smile lighting up his face as he keeps a tennis ball in the air with his feet longer than Maymo. Roger becomes too transfixed by him, watching him curiously, as if it were possible, perhaps, to calculate the contours of his smile lines or the depth of happiness in his eyes, to think any more about the shadows of the future.

They share the locker room after practice, the two teams, though only Roger and Rafa hit the showers. The others are talking and laughing by the lockers, a clamour of languages and opinions, talking about Djokovic’s run and Andy Murray’s ankle, all the while buoyed up by the prospect of Federer and Nadal facing each other in a final once more. Mirka texts the nanny and tells her they might be later than expected back to the hotel and then goes back to a conversation with Toni in German, faltering now and then as they try to make out each other’s accents.

Rafa asks him about the twins on the way to the showers; he answers as he enters the cubicle and he leaves the door ajar, so that his voice will carry. The showers in the Roland Garros dressing room are expensive and luxurious: a heavy wooden door opens into a small changing room, and a further glass door then leads to the shower, which has multiple jets and settings. Rafa has left his door ajar too, and Roger can hear his sweaty clothes hit the tiles as he flings them onto the ground. Roger bites his lip and then asks Rafa about Xisca, and he knows it is a curveball. There is a heavy pause before the answer comes: “She is fine,” is all he says. Then Roger hears the glass door to the shower slide open and closed again, and hears the jets come on.

He sighs. Rafa knows the code. They both know what “How is Xisca?” has, over the years, come to mean. He should not have asked it.

Roger strips off his own clothes, making some attempt at folding them before stuffing them into his kit bag. He steps into his own shower and turns it on as strong and hot as he can stand it. He leans into the jets, eyes closed, feeling the water work out the lingering tightness in his muscles, brought on by hard play and practice and the close presence of Rafa Nadal.

How close he really is, Roger discovers only when he hears the door of his shower slide open again. Rafa stands in front of him, towel around his waist, thunder in his eyes. “You ask me about Xisca,” is all he says. Roger feels a rush of blood surging to his head and to his groin, and he has to take a moment, put a hand to the wall to steady himself, before he can answer.

“Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have. I really meant, you know, how is Xisca.”

“No, you didn’t,” says Rafa. His eyes are steady, neither accusatory nor betraying any desire. Roger feels transparent, flawed, humbled. He feels naked.

He is naked, and acutely aware that it’s been over two years since he and Rafa have been in such proximity, nothing but a flimsy towel between them.

Rafa turns, and for a moment Roger wants to reach out, to prevent him from leaving, until he sees that Rafa is not leaving. He closes over the door to the shower cubicle, slowly sliding the lock into place, and Roger feels his breath hitch and his temperature rise, and his head is swimming a little when Rafa turns back to him. Rafa loosens his towel and lets it fall, and comes into the shower with Roger, crowding him against the wall.

“Two years ago, you told me this is over, no?” he says. Roger doesn’t know if he is asking him or telling him.

“Yes,” he says. “God, Rafa. I miss you.” His voice comes out as a raspy whisper as Rafa begins to press against him.

“I miss you, too,” murmurs Rafa, leaning close, right against his ear. He presses his cheek to Roger’s, stubble catching and scratching a little, his breath coming hot against Roger’s skin, before their mouths find each other and they are kissing, pressed against the wall, water pouring all around them, and no one exists in the world apart from the two of them.

 

He tries to hide the light in his eyes, later, when he and Mirka return to the hotel. He can still feel Rafa’s slippery skin against his palms, the hard curves of Rafa’s body. So intoxicating to hold him again. He can feel her watching him, watching him drift into reverie as they eat dinner in their suite, the girls already in bed and the nanny vanished to her room next door. Usually, these days, the night before any match, he goes over strategy with Mirka, speaking in the shorthand they’ve developed during their years together. But tonight there’s no point.

“You know you can beat him?” she is telling him earnestly, and his stomach wrenches, all of a sudden, with the lie he is once more concealing.

He looks at her for a moment, holding her gaze. “He’ll win,” says Roger, flatly. “The only question is how quickly.”

She is taken aback. “You can’t go into the match thinking that,” she says. “You’ve got to believe you can win, Roger. You’ve beaten him on clay before. Remember Hamburg? You can win.”

Roger shrugs, emptying his glass of water and wishing he could risk another glass of wine. He looks at her again, sees something akin to betrayal in her eyes. He shakes his head, smiling a little, as if clearing out his thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. Got to be positive, right?”

She looks a little relieved. “Yes. Of course! This is the year you will beat him at Roland Garros, Roger,” she says, and he murmurs his agreement and falls back into silence. He cannot tell her how close he feels, how close to some kind of edge. How close to one more defeat on Philippe Chatrier.

 

He wanders the halls after she falls asleep. Years before, he would have known Rafa’s room, but this year he does not. He meets him, all the same, slipping his keycard into the lock on the door to his suite. Rafa stills when he sees Roger.

The hotel corridor is empty, but Roger feels eyes behind every peephole. He jerks his head towards Rafa’s door, and Rafa understands; they slip inside quietly and quickly. Roger closes the door behind him with a gentle click, and then, in the dark, they kiss again, open-mouthed and wet and deep, and it feels so good to be back here.

They don’t bother with lights. They stumble, instead, through the main room of the suite, into the bedroom, where Rafa quickly kicks discarded trainers and t-shirts aside, and fishes for condoms and lube in a suitcase by the window. It makes Roger happy, deep down, that he hasn’t needed them closer to the bed. Soon they are skin to skin on top of Rafa’s sheets. The cotton is cool in contrast to Rafa’s heat. Roger wants to talk to him, feels a thousand words bubbling inside his chest, words of sorrow, of aching loneliness, of relief, of love. But he pushes Rafa’s thighs apart and says none of them.

Rafa is as gloriously strong and athletic as he remembers. He stretches out his legs, allowing Roger deep inside. They fuck face to face, mouths moving together, gasping together, and when Rafa starts to get loud—-that centre-court sound so incongruous here in bed-—he clamps his hand over his mouth. He doesn’t care if anyone hears them; he just likes to do it. He grinds harder, just to feel Rafa lose it underneath him, his groans muffled against Roger’s palm. They are both slick with sweat, moving together, and this is it, this is where Roger has always been in control. On court, they battle; in bed, Rafa always submits.

He makes Rafa come before him, hips lifting up off the bed, breath gasping and quick, and Roger lets him ride it out, muscles clenching around his cock, until he comes down. Then Roger fucks him hard again, Rafa’s legs over his shoulders and his fingers dug into his back. He can feel it, so close. He moves his hand from Rafa’s mouth, using it to steady himself as he comes closer and closer, and Rafa starts to talk to him, a string of unrecognisable words, but Roger can hear what he means anyway, and then he hits it, suspended, for a moment, on the brink of orgasm, before he falls, crying out, shaking and collapsing into Rafa’s arms.

They lie there for a little while, coming down, until Roger slides out, slips off the condom, and pads to the bathroom to throw it out. He has to turn on the light, and it blinds him. When he returns to the bedroom, Rafa is pushing back the bedclothes, softly illuminated now in the light spilling from the bathroom door. Roger watches him until Rafa notices.

“I can’t stay,” he says.

Rafa picks up his ridiculously expensive watch and pushes a button on the side. “I’ll set the alarm. Stay for a little while.”

He pushes another button and frowns, and then his face clears, and Roger can hear the beeps as Rafa sets the time.

“Rafa, I don’t know, I can’t…” he says, faltering.

Rafa looks up at him once more, laying his watch on the bedside table. He sighs, and there is a touch of annoyance to it. “Whatever you want, Roger,” he says, and he leans back against the pillows, waiting.

“You were in this suite before,” says Roger. In the light, the room clicks into place. They’ve fucked in this bedroom before, and on the couch in the living room, too, and on the dining table by the balcony doors. He once stayed the night in this bed.

“I ask for this room every year,” says Rafa, shrugging.

Roger stands in the doorway, looking at him. He feels the old fault line once more, the crack deep inside himself, one side pulling him towards Mirka, but the other always, always belonging here with Rafa. That side of him is starved, aching to climb into bed with Rafa, to feel him curl against his chest, warm and compliant beside him.

So he does.


End file.
